Share this story

10:10am ET Wednesday Update: With better weather in Florida, SpaceX's launch of its next 60 Starlink satellites proceeded smoothly on Wednesday morning. About 1 hour after launch, the stack of satellites deployed into low-Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, recovery operations also went well. The Falcon 9 rocket's thrice-used first stage landed on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship, and the Ms. Tree vessel caught one of the two payload fairing halves. Ms. Chief just missed the other one, the company said on its webcast.

Enlarge/ Deployment of Starlink satellites with the limb of the Earth in the background.

SpaceX

8:00am ET Wednesday Update: Weather conditions are finally looking better at Cape Canaveral, in Florida, as well as offshore for rocket recovery. As a result, SpaceX is targeting 9:06am ET (14:06 UTC) for the launch of the Starlink-3 mission.

9:30am ET Monday Update: SpaceX scrubbed Monday's launch attempt due to strong upper-level winds. The company will now target a back-up launch opportunity on 9:28am ET (14:28 UTC) Tuesday, when weather conditions are expected to be more favorable.

Original post: Weather-permitting, SpaceX will attempt to launch its third batch of operational Starlink satellites on Monday morning. Liftoff is scheduled for 9:49am ET (14:49 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

However, weather is a legitimate concern. The forecast calls for a 50-percent chance of acceptable conditions at the surface, and there are also concerns about strong upper-level winds that may also preclude a launch. Weather conditions appear to be more favorable for a back-up launch attempt on Tuesday morning.

This will be the fourth launch of 60 Starlink satellites, the first of which occurred in May 2019. The first batch of satellites was "experimental," and the company launched its first operational satellites on the Starlink-1 mission in November. Since then it has been flying missions at a cadence of once per month. With this flight, SpaceX will have a total of about 230 satellites on orbit. Later this year, the company hopes to begin deploying Internet service to the United States and Canada, with global coverage beginning in 2021.

Further Reading

These satellites will be launched to an altitude of 290km and then will raise their orbits to an altitude of 550km over the next one to four weeks, SpaceX said.

The "trains" of Starlink satellites have raised widespread concern in the astronomical community, whose members worry about the effect of potentially thousands of these small spacecraft on their observations. In response, SpaceX has begun experimenting with darkening treatment and will consider other measures. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he is sympathetic to the concerns of astronomers and will take steps to ensure the fidelity of astronomical observations.

Monday's launch attempt will be flown by a thrice-used first stage, which previously lifted the first Starlink mission in May 2019, the Iridium-8 mission in January 2019, and the Telstar 18 VANTAGE mission in September 2018. It will attempt a landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship. In addition, SpaceX has deployed the Ms. Tree vessel to attempt to recover a payload fairing half. The webcast should begin about 15 minutes before liftoff.

I really wonder at what point SpaceX launches become as humdrum as the flight of an aeroplane is today. Personally, I find watching the launch and first-stage landing of even 'ordinary' missions like these truly fascinating, never mind launches such as the Crew Dragon abort, or 'milestone' re-use missions.

And with the development pipeline of Starship, I suspect that I'll be tuning in to watch live SpaceX launches for many years to come.

Since then it has been flying missions at a cadence of once per month.

However, beginning with Starlink-2, SpaceX has accelerated into a notional two-week cadence. Of course, weather will prevent anything close to a precise 14-day cycle, especially due to recovery weather requirements at sea.

Gwynne Shotwell revealed a couple weeks ago that SpaceX is now churning out 7 Starlink satellites per day. That's plenty to feed the launch campaign. Starlink will be the "customer" waiting on SpaceX to be ready to launch, like the bad old days, while the industry adjusts to increased launch capacity and short backlogs.

EDIT: T-35m and HOLDING. Must have been no-go for propellant load (presumably weather).

They haven't said much about the business side of Starlink, have they? I assume that with "only" a few hundred satellites in the first wave, the initial round of service is going to be aimed (and priced) at people who are customers of existing satellite providers, rather than the vast number of people who hate their local cable company.

Have there been any actual studies or predictions re the constellation's impact on other endeavors? Or is it like 5G being pushed hard by industry and the concerns ignored by regulators?

Starlink is not a mobile handheld connectivity service, so it does not compete with 5G. It could play a role in 5G deployments, because Starlink terminals could be a much cheaper "backhaul" solution for deploying towers in areas without extensive fiber infrastructure.

However, I'd argue that in general, wifi has a stronger synergy with Starlink than cellular, and that there will be thousands and thousands of wifi hotspots around the world connected to the Internet via Starlink.

Have there been any actual studies or predictions re the constellation's impact on other endeavors? Or is it like 5G being pushed hard by industry and the concerns ignored by regulators?

AFAIK no one in the astronomy community have done any formal studies on the possible effects, despite having the know-how and advance warning to do so, though I could be wrong

Although to be fair, it's like asking a sport fishing organization to study what will happen when a private company diverts the water upstream in a number of rivers. They can complain, but are essentially powerless to do anything about it.

Besides, I don't know if any astronomy organizations that had an excess of cash available to commission studies on the impact of commercial spaceflight on observational outcomes before the initial launches of Starlink, especially since satellites haven't had as much an impact before.

Clearly, this is different because we're talking launches of 60-at-a-time, rather than a handful.

Edit: the studies blackhawk887 posted were all what the effects were, post-launch of the first satellite set.

Have there been any actual studies or predictions re the constellation's impact on other endeavors? Or is it like 5G being pushed hard by industry and the concerns ignored by regulators?

The astronomy aspect is already well discussed.

The issue with 24 GHz 5G (to be clear not all 5G just 5G in the 24 GHz band) is due to interference with the water vapor measuring band. The frequency range used by starlink is the same frequency used by conventional GSO comsats. The only risk of interference is between starlink and conventional sats. The good news is that GSO sats are at 0 inclination. The dishes on Earth are always aimed at a fixed point above the southern horizon. That provides a solution in that you can turn off starlink (and other LEO) sats transmissions when they pass close to the equator. As long as the angle between the GSO sat and LEO sats is large enough they can co-exist without issue.

They haven't said much about the business side of Starlink, have they? I assume that with "only" a few hundred satellites in the first wave, the initial round of service is going to be aimed (and priced) at people who are customers of existing satellite providers, rather than the vast number of people who hate their local cable company.

For the first 5 years (or more) it's not going to be aimed at people that hate their local cable company, unless that people leave in a sparsely populated area.

Besides, I don't know if any astronomy organizations that have an excess of cash available to commission studies on the impact of commercial spaceflight on observational outcomes, especially since satellites haven't had as much an impact before.

I can tell you first-hand that the last thing the astronomy community has is an excess of cash to study these sorts of things.

Regard us as over-funded Prima Donnas if you wish to, and by all means argue that the societal benefits of pervasive cheap broadband outweigh any benefits that astronomy might have in inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

My personal view is that the day that mankind turns its collective eyes down from the heavens and towards their iPads to binge-watch the latest stream of TOWIE is when we lose something of what makes us essentially human.

They haven't said much about the business side of Starlink, have they? I assume that with "only" a few hundred satellites in the first wave, the initial round of service is going to be aimed (and priced) at people who are customers of existing satellite providers, rather than the vast number of people who hate their local cable company.

Given that they are expecting 10 billion in yearly revenue once fully deployed, I am expecting that the service won't be cheap, but it will provide a ton of value. Likely $70-$90 for a gigabit connection. Comcast is now averaging $95-$115 for a gigabit connection with unlimited data, so I do expect Starlink to slightly undercut Comcast, but not anymore then they have to.

All this is assuming they don't adopt per mb/per gb pricing, of course. However, Elon Musk knows that if he can corner the last mile, 10 billion will be a conservative estimate. I don't know a single person here who is in love with the likes of Comcast, etc.

Some countries are deploying 5G in bands that are close to a frequency that it's used by weather satellites to measure the amount of water in the air.

To be clear some countries is the US specifically the corrupt FCC. Other countries aren't stupid enough to permanently disrupt weather forecasting so the cellular companies can make a couple extra dollars. Of course the whole world is still hurt by this stupidity because weather is a global system and being able to measure water vapor over the US feeds data models for weather far beyond the US borders.

They haven't said much about the business side of Starlink, have they? I assume that with "only" a few hundred satellites in the first wave, the initial round of service is going to be aimed (and priced) at people who are customers of existing satellite providers, rather than the vast number of people who hate their local cable company.

I would expect the initial round to mostly implement a redundant backhaul between various Google datacenters. That's a fully tuneable workload that does not get irate customers calling tech support and lets Google get first payer advantage for their investment four years ago.

They haven't said much about the business side of Starlink, have they? I assume that with "only" a few hundred satellites in the first wave, the initial round of service is going to be aimed (and priced) at people who are customers of existing satellite providers, rather than the vast number of people who hate their local cable company.

Given that they are expecting 10 billion in yearly revenue once fully deployed, I am expecting that the service won't be cheap, but it will provide a ton of value. Likely $70-$90 for a gigabit connection. Comcast is now averaging $95-$115 for a gigabit connection with unlimited data, so I do expect Starlink to slightly undercut Comcast, but not anymore then they have to.

All this is assuming they don't adopt per mb/per gb pricing, of course. However, Elon Musk knows that if he can corner the last mile, 10 billion will be a conservative estimate. I don't know a single person here who is in love with the likes of Comcast, etc.

Some people might use Starlink over Comcast or Verzion FIOS out of non-economic reasons but I really doubt Starlink will offer pricing comparable to the best cable or fiber networks. Of course a lot of people would love to have service as good as Comcast. They are stuck paying $50, $70, or even $90 for ancient <2 Mbps DSL, high latency satellite, or trying to use a cellular connection as their primary residential service.

I really wonder at what point SpaceX launches become as humdrum as the flight of an aeroplane is today. Personally, I find watching the launch and first-stage landing of even 'ordinary' missions like these truly fascinating, never mind launches such as the Crew Dragon abort, or 'milestone' re-use missions.

And with the development pipeline of Starship, I suspect that I'll be tuning in to watch live SpaceX launches for many years to come.

The writers over at NASASpaceflight have joked about having drop their launch articles. The typically publish descriptions of each launch, updates and recent events about the company, rocket and satellites. The same for photographers, even now it's sometimes hard to judge whether to stay for the next launch in a few days, too. With weekly launches, that is going to be quite the task.

Have there been any actual studies or predictions re the constellation's impact on other endeavors? Or is it like 5G being pushed hard by industry and the concerns ignored by regulators?

AFAIK no one in the astronomy community have done any formal studies on the possible effects, despite having the know-how and advance warning to do so, though I could be wrong

There have been plenty of studies by reputable astronomers and satellite trackers, including the one published at the AAS conference for the discussion of megaconstellations which included SpaceX representatives... I guess the biggest reason to act like there are none is that "5 or 6 visible satellites around twilight" doesn't make for as grabbing a headline.

"It will attemptmake a landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship. In addition, SpaceX has deployed the Ms. Tree vessel to attempt to recover a payload fairing half. The webcast should begin about 15 minutes before liftoff."

a little ftfy. I think by now we can say that the first stage will be landing on the drone ship (or back at the cape) instead of "attempting". I mean, we don't say that Delta Flight 17 will be making an attempted landing on runway 31L at ATL. If we are not ready to be confident,r at what point do we decide that the F9 is dependable enough to "make the landing".

I do get the attempted recovery regarding the fairing. They've not had the best success and continue ways to make it work.

Anywho, I'll tune in tomorrow to watch the launch and subsequent landing of the F9 as it does its job.

Besides, I don't know if any astronomy organizations that have an excess of cash available to commission studies on the impact of commercial spaceflight on observational outcomes, especially since satellites haven't had as much an impact before.

I can tell you first-hand that the last thing the astronomy community has is an excess of cash to study these sorts of things.

Regard us as over-funded Prima Donnas if you wish to, and by all means argue that the societal benefits of pervasive cheap broadband outweigh any benefits that astronomy might have in inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

My personal view is that the day that mankind turns its collective eyes down from the heavens and towards their iPads to binge-watch the latest stream of TOWIE is when we lose something of what makes us essentially human.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say on the issue.

I think the entire situation is overblown. Even with all the Starlink satellites launched, 100% of the sky will be viewable. Maybe not by everyone, but maybe it is time to modernize astronomy. You might be looking at that iPad (connected to a remote telescope) to see the 1% of the sky you can't see.

It's not how much of the sky is "viewable" - it's what the satellites do to the observations.

To "see" into the far corners of the Universe, telescopes need extremely long exposure times to collect light.

If you look at the slides in blackhawk887's post, they show how Starlink reflections streak across the images obtained.

Ultimately, major processing upgrades will be needed to digitally "erase" all those streaks, and the results will have to be checked to make sure new artifacts haven't been introduced by the process.